Women's Club Volleyball Team Wins National D2 Tournament

Butler’s women’s club volleyball team won the National Collegiate Volleyball Federation’s National Championship Tournament, defeating University of Wisconsin-La Crosse 25-17 in back-to-back games.

Rachel Pierce and Sam Lilly were named to the women’s Division 2 All-Tournament Team, and Kennedy Flesner was named to the All-Tournament Second Team. Pierce was named tournament MVP, and Meghan Riordan earned honorable mention.

The tournament, which took place April 12-15, attracted over 440 NCVF collegiate club teams from throughout the country. The tournament featured 10 divisions of competition, with 1,683 individual matches played on 63 courts over a three-day span at the Kansas City Convention Center.

Pierce, the Women’s Club Volleyball President, reports:

The entire tournament we worked incredibly as a team. We didn’t let teams string points together very often, and our confidence in ourselves was never shaken. Though we were in Division 2, the competition was still extremely tough. All of the other teams in the gold bracket on the last day have players on both the first and second All-Tournament Teams.

Western Washington, Wake Forest, UM Duluth, and UW LaCrosse specifically were our toughest games, but most of the time we were able to come out on top. (During our regular season we play mostly Division 1 teams like IU, Purdue, Ball State, Dayton, Cincinnati, etc. But the teams in Division 2 work just as hard and are just as talented.)

We also have five freshmen on our nationals roster, and 10 on our regular season roster. So our team this year was very young and very new. They all worked very hard during the year, and I’m excited to see where they’ll take the team.

As for the upperclassmen (those who are first-years), each one of them is extremely integral to the team and a leader on and off the court. Suzie Smith runs our defense and serve receive and leads by example; Anna Taylor is one of the most vocal on the court and keeps us competitive; Kennedy Flesner is one of the hardest workers, if not the hardest worker, and leads with humor and positivity; Sam Lilly is the most caring, always trying to bring our team together; Lindsay Rhodes and Ashley Eimers somehow always get kills when we need them the most and are always ready to do whatever they need to do on the court to keep us in the game.

Honestly, we’ve never played together like we did at this national tournament. It was an amazing and unforgettable way for us (and for me as a senior) to go out.

Women's Club Volleyball Team Wins National D2 Tournament

All-American Erik Peterson Qualifies for U.S. Olympic Trials

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PUBLISHED ON Jun 28 2016

Butler All-American Erik Peterson has earned a spot in the upcoming U.S. Olympic Team Trials – Track & Field. He'll join 23 of the best runners in the country in the 10,000 meters on Friday night, July 1, in Eugene, Oregon. The field was set late Monday night.

The men's 10,000 meters final highlights the first day of competition in Eugene, with the event set to begin at 6:15 PM (Pacific, 9:15 p.m. Eastern). NBC Sports will provide coverage of the Olympic Trials throughout the week.

"For Erik to rise to this level from such modest beginnings is a testament to his remarkable work ethic and his consistency," said Butler head coach Matt Roe. "Much like his stride, he is a moving picture of economy and efficiency. He does exactly what he needs to do, when he needs to do it, exactly as prescribed. He never wastes a step, and equally as important, he never overthinks it. Erik is as steady and as consistent as any athlete I have ever coached."

Peterson is the youngest runner in the field and the only with remaining collegiate eligibility heading into the 2016-17 academic year. He turned 22 just two weeks ago. Peterson was also the youngest in the field when he competed at the 2015 USA Track & Field National Championships in Eugene almost 12 months ago.

"Most of the men in the field are full-time professionals in their late 20s to early 30s," said Roe. "That is the peak age range for an elite distance runner. Beyond sheer talent, it takes tens of thousands of miles of running volume to get to the Olympic Trials 10,000 meters. Recent athletes who have qualified for this race around Erik's age have almost universally been phenoms, guys like Galen Rupp, Dathan Ritzenhein, and Chris Derrick."

As a frame of reference, Peterson is one month younger than Rupp was when he first ran in the Olympic Trials in 2008.

Peterson's time of 28:26.08 gave him the 24th and final spot in the field.

Earlier this month, Peterson earned All-American honors by finishing eighth in the 10,000 meters at the NCAA Championships.

Butler Student-Athletes Post Success on the Student Side

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PUBLISHED ON Jun 20 2016

Butler student-athletes posted a department grade point average of 3.253 for the fall 2015 semester and followed that up with a GPA of 3.338 for the

spring 2016 semester. Additionally, all 17 of Butler’s athletic teams boast cumulative GPAs above 3.0. These were among many 2015-16 academic highlights for Butler’s student-athletes in the classroom that were announced Wednesday, June 15.

“The Butler Way has always made academic achievement a top area of focus, and once again, our student-athletes have posted a very successful academic year,” Butler Vice President/Director of Athletics Barry Collier said. “I’m very proud of the caliber of student that we recruit to Butler University and the effort these students display to produce this level of accomplishment. I want to thank not only our student-athletes, but their coaches, our support staff within Athletics, and the great professors who do so much to assist students with their academic endeavors.”

In the fall semester, 223 Butler student-athletes were named to the Athletic Director’s Honor Roll with a GPA of 3.25 or better. Twenty-nine Bulldogs posted a perfect 4.0 GPA for the fall 2015 semester. Those numbers increased for the spring 2016 semester with 266 student-athletes earning a 3.25 GPA or better and 38 individuals registering a 4.0 GPA.

Butler University annual recognizes its Top 100 students. Included among those Top 100 students for the 2015-16 academic year were four student-athletes: Kailey Eaton (women’s tennis), Sean Horan (football), Nicole Johnson (women’s golf), and Belle Obert (women’s basketball). Additionally, Horan and Johnson were designated among the Top 10 Male and Top 10 Female Students, respectively.

Men’s soccer standout David Goldsmith was awarded third team Academic All-America honors from CoSIDA. Kellen Dunham, who graduated in May, was named the BIG EAST Men’s Basketball Scholar-Athlete of the Year. Football student-athlete Matt Shiltz earned the distinction as the Pioneer Football League’s Co-Scholar Athlete of the Year. He was one of nine Bulldogs to earn Academic All-PFL honors for their work in the classroom and play on the field. Numerous Butler teams earned accolades from their respective coaches associations for achieving a certain level of grade point average.

The women’s golf team posted the top team GPA for both the fall 2015 and spring 2016 semesters, with performances of 3.651 and 3.708, respectively. The women’s cross country team ranked second in the fall 2015 semester (3.591) and third in the spring 2016 semester (3.633). Butler’s men’s tennis team had a 3.541 GPA in the fall semester, the third-best mark among Bulldog teams, while the women’s track and field team posted a 3.653 GPA in the spring, the second-best mark for that semester.

Erik Peterson of the cross country team and Sophia Maccagnone of the women's soccer team were named institutional winners at Butler for the 2015-16 BIG EAST Institutional Scholar-Athlete Scholarships, which were announced by the conference in February. The award recognizes athletes for their academic and athletic achievements, and also their involvement in community service.

Additional BIG EAST academic honors for the 2015-16 academic year, including the BIG EAST All-Academic Team and the BIG EAST Team Academic Excellence Awards, will be announced later this summer.

**Butler offers 20 Division I sports. Women’s lacrosse has its inaugural season with the 2016-17 academic year and has yet to accumulate a GPA. Butler offers indoor and outdoor track and field for both men and women, but for the purposes of this report, those teams are designated as men’s track and field and women’s track and field, which makes a total of 17 rosters associated with GPAs for the 2015-16 academic year.

For These Students, the Sweet 16 Is That Much Sweeter

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PUBLISHED ON Mar 18 2017

Butler fans around the country have been rooting for the men’s basketball team this week, but three students had an extra incentive to cheer: Now that the Bulldogs have made it to the Sweet 16, juniors Alex Tison, Claire Cox, and Kaylynn Cline will be flown to Chicago to appear on a new ESPN quiz show called Bracket Genius.

The Butler team will play Kentucky, North Carolina, and UCLA on March 26 at 5:30 PM. Bonus round episodes will air Monday, March 27 at 6 p.m. and 6:30 p.m. ET. The final four teams will face off in the Bracket Genius championship episode scheduled to air on Tuesday, April 4 at 7 p.m.

The three students—and an alternate, sophomore Corrine Campbell—were chosen after winning a trivia contest and then going through a Skype audition. The producers used the audition to select students who projected personality as well as intelligence.

“To stand out in the audition, I just tried to be as personable and talkative as possible,” said Tison, a junior Finance and Marketing major from Harrisburg, Illinois. “I just thought if I could leave an impression then they would be more likely to pick me. I also tried to interact a lot with the other people interviewing.”

Bracket Genius, hosted by Trey Wingo, will pit university academic teams, consisting of three undergraduate students, against one another in a bracket-style competition for the chance to have their team crowned the inaugural Bracket Genius Champion and share the prize of $100,000.

The final 16 universities represented in the NCAA tournament will match up in the same head-to-head games on Bracket Genius, where the winning team advances by answering questions spanning history, geography, politics, literature, science, pop culture, the arts, and sports in a race to score as many points as possible against the clock and their opponent.

The opening round matchups are scheduled to air Wednesday, March 22, and Sunday, March 26, at 5:00 PM and 5:30 PM Eastern Time. Each half-hour episode will feature four teams vying for the chance to advance to the Bracket Genius championship episode.

Bonus round episodes will air Monday, March 27, at 6:00 PM and 6:30 PM. These half-hour episodes, Bracket Genius: Extra Credit, will give the four championship contenders a chance to win extra cash prizes of up to $25,000 per episode.